Point of info: The Patriot Act is never going to be simply "repealed"

[HamdenRice]

I wrote this in response in another thread and thought the information might be useful to the general DU reading audience. I think many don't know how federal laws are enacted and coded -- but I'm sure the computer programmers out there will understand this intuitively:


The Patriot Act wasn't just warrantless wiretapping. It was huge and really can't simply be repealed.

The PA was not just the awful illegal stuff Bush wanted. It was also a laundry list of stuff that the Justice Department had wanted to do with criminal procedure and terrorism going back to the Clinton administration. That's why it was submitted so quickly -- most of its bits and pieces had been on the shelf at DOJ for years. It was many hundreds of pages long and the most offensive stuff was not the majority of what was in it.

Also the way federal law works, you don't just "repeal" an act like that. I realize this is complicated, but here goes: Federal law is in two forms. There are individual "Acts" like the PA -- those are bills passed by Congress and signed by the president.

Then those individual acts get incorporated into the second form of federal law -- a complete set of federal laws called the "U.S. Code."

The PA is not just a single stand alone law. Most of it, like most federal Acts, reads something like this (I'm making this up just as an example):

"Title III, Section 4 of U.S. Code which currently reads, 'no person shall eat twinky while doing guard duty in Guantanamo,' shall be amended to read, 'no person shall, without the permission of his commanding officer, eat a twinky while doing guard duty in Guantanamo."

Or worse, a lot of it reads:

"In Title III, Section 5, subsection (c), the word 'shall' is replaced with the word, 'may.'"

So the U.S. Code's Justice Department, criminal procedure, terrorism and other sections were overhauled by the PA. It wasn't just a few rules that stand alone. As you can see, individual "Acts" are almost incomprehensible without the Code. Simply repealing a massive Act, like the PA, would leave all sorts of holes and missing words and sentences scattered throughout the U.S. Code. (For example, in my example above, repealing the Act would not bring back the word "shall" so there would be a word-hole in the Code.)

Hence, the PA is never going to be simply "repealed" -- ever. That's simply not the way all the offensive sections of the PA can be removed from the U.S. Code. At this point, it's impossible. What would happen is that the new and improved Justice Department would either submit to Congress piecemeal amendments to the U.S. Code as it finds bad parts of the PA embedded in the Code (hey programmers, sound familiar?), or it would submit yet another comprehensive overhaul of the Titles of the U.S. Code that govern the Justice Department, criminal procedure and terrorism.

When that happens, the DOJ may say to the public, that it has "repealed" the PA, or parts of the PA, but what it really will mean is that it has amended the US Code. Simple repeal -- a kind of do-over -- is not remotely feasible.

(Edited for clarity.)

[sojourner]

1. thank you very much for this - it is easy to oversimplify things when we're passionate...

but it does not change the facts. your post is a welcome reminder of how complex the processes of making/repealing laws can be.

[Avalux]

2. Thank you.

Another very complicated issue that is reduced to black and white by those who are thinking with emotion rather than their brains.

[treestar]

3. It too was many pages long

So it might not have all been bad.

But the articles on it are suspect. They don't say what the Administration has to say at this point, just a lot of assumption.

[ieoeja]

4. Self delete

[leveymg]

5. Hope you liked the Fourth Amendment: it didn't make it out of the ICU

Get used to TIA, everywhere, all the time, permanently. It's already here. Do you feel safer now?

[Hutzpa]

6. This is total Hogwash, and I'll explain

You don't use semantics to befuddle people, words like "Shall" and "May" are just to mesmerize ignorant people into
thinking that they're fighting terrarist when in actuality it is the wet dream of some Neo Fascist chauvinist,
reminds me of Bush pissing on people and then telling them oh no it's just rain.

Why would peeping be ok, there are things I would liked to see stay private, there is no good or bad to spying, there
cannot be any justification for spying irregardless of what the government might say. Spying is like vindicating peoples
privacy and that is plain wrong, no amount of crime can justify the Government spying on it's citizens.

Just as the U.S. code of conduct on spying is bad you can say the same for programmers who specializes in writing viruses
to prevent the government from snooping into their machines.

Bottomline....there is no justification for spying on citizens, none, you can monitor transaction being made in and out of
the country, but when you start prying into peoples personal property, that is just plain wrong.

[HamdenRice]

7. Not even of suspected criminals with a warrant from a court based on probable cause?

Let's just say most of the adult world disagrees with you.

I'm not even sure what spying you are talking about. Do you know what is in the PA in total?

You seem not to have understood the OP at all -- namely, there is a huge amount in the PA that is not about "spying" and that can't be repealed just by repealing the Act itself.

[Hutzpa]

8. Yeah!

but that is based on words such as "Shall" or "May" these are commanding orders, I understand the OP fully which is,
it takes time to repeal a constitution as complicated as PA, the bottom line is, if the Government wants it repeal
they can get it done, but as long as some official sees it as justifiable then it would seem to take awhile to repeal.

[HamdenRice]

9. shall and may were just my hypothetical words. I said I made them up.

I'm just trying to convey what the code looks like and how it's amended.

[jberryhill]

14. You hit the relevant point....

Consider removal of a computer virus, though.

Normally, a virus will get into an otherwise innocuous piece of software, like some .dll module used by Internet Explorer.

You don't just "delete" that .dll, because it corresponds to something IE needs in order to function, and includes modules which are otherwise normal.

Instead, to fix an infection, you have to install a patch.

The OP is directed to this notion of "repealing the Patriot Act", as if there was some single stroke that would perform an undo on the US Code.

Nothing in the OP supports violations of the Fourth Amendment, and there are already portions of the Patriot Act which have been judicially nullified.

[Hutzpa]

17. Point taken

what happens when the patch fails, I've seen computers that are badly infected with malicious ware and installing
windows patch does not solve the problem, as a matteroffact it prevents any updates.

[jberryhill]

20. Buy a new computer...

I just removed 32 gigs of accumulated cruft and installer residue from a three year old laptop.

That's pretty much what the Tax Code looks like.

[Hutzpa]

22. What happens if they can't afford one

considering the economy en all.

I'll assume they can't afford a new computer that's why they might want this fix.

[jberryhill]

23. format the drive and reinstall

Is this a tech help forum?

[uponit7771]

10. ****THANK YOU***** You're post is VERY VERY informative...

[HamdenRice]

19. You're very welcome! nt

[LWolf]

11. Beside the point.

Obama can allow the provisions in question to expire without repealing the bill. He can refuse to sign extensions sent to him.

[azmouse]

12. Thank you.

:thumbsup:

[jberryhill]

13. Some Provisions Have Been Judicially Neutered Already....

I had seen this topic pop up a few times before, but didn't have the patience to address it.

Any Act of Congress includes an extensive mark-up of the existing US Code. You are right on target with the idea that you can't just press the "undo" button on what was passed as an Act.

Furthermore, when a portion of a statute is judicially overturned, it doesn't simply vanish from the text of the US Code either.

This is why, if you really care what the law is, you have to look at the US Code Annotated (USCA), which includes for each section of the Code summaries and pointers to relevant court decisions interpreting, applying, or neutering the section of the Code in which you are interested.

But, yes, it seems that many folks think the accumulated laws of the US consist of the "This Act" and the "That Act". Those are simply the vehicles by which amendments and additions are made to the US Code.

The Patriot Act included a boatload of odious stuff. Some of that stuff is already inoperative through court decisions, and some other stuff should be legislatively taken out - but it won't be in the form of a "repeal of the Patriot Act". Any piece of legislation removing further odious stuff from the larger collection of stuff passed as "The Patriot Act", will be the "Taking Some Odious Stuff Out Of The This-And-That Act".

...or a fuzzy puppy title like the "Fourth Amendment Rights Restoration Act", if you like.

The analogy to computer code is quite apt. You can't simply muck around in your Windows System Folder to delete bits of things which are behaving badly, because they are all intertwined. You have to install a patch which adjusts everything else around the badly behaving piece of the module in question.

This also relates back to the "OMG A 2000 PAGE BILL!" stuff around healthcare. Aside from the fact that, if printed normally it wouldn't be much bigger than _Going Rogue_, the raft of "conforming amendments" to existing code causes a good deal of bloat in any piece of legislation. That's why there are these nerdy young men and women with thick glasses and greasy hair running around Capitol Hill that write the patches to the existing code when a new Act is installed. They are very much like IT geeks.

[Hutzpa]

15. What?

The analogy to computer code is quite apt. You can't simply muck around in your Windows System Folder to delete bits of things which are behaving badly, because they are all intertwined. You have to install a patch which adjusts everything else around the badly behaving piece of the module in question.

Are you kidding me???

[jberryhill]

16. No, I'm not kidding you

If Program A is making function calls to infected Program B, you can't simply delete Program B.

Try simply deleting a corrupted Rundll32.exe from your Windows machine sometime, and let me know how that works out for you.

[Hutzpa]

18. Not so sure if that will work

because a friend of mine tried the very same thing you just mentioned, using the Windows CD to reinstall Rundll32,
the malicious ware prevented it from installing, instead message was 'Windows could not find the requested partition'
sounds like it been hijack, thats what I told my friend.

[Kdillard]

21. Thank you for this very informative post. k and r

[firedupdem]

24. K&R

This is an informative post!!

:yourock:

[Cha]

25. Thanks, Hamden..pointing out how

this works is invaluble to know especially with all the rage going on.